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Friday, 19 June 2009

Islamic Financial System Has Opportunity To Grow

SEPANG, June 18 (Bernama) -- The Islamic financial system has opportunity to grow and expand while the global community is faced with challenges from the upheavals in the conventional financial system.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Jamil Khir Baharom said to meet that target three aspects had to be given attention.

Firstly, developing an Islamic financial industry that was truly sound, strong and established to face any crisis and challenge.

"Second, to encourage growth of the Islamic financial landscape based on instruments that can compete, were creative and innovative, and thirdly solidify monitoring and legal aspects to face the global financial environment that is getting more challenging," he said while officiating the 5th Muzakarah of Members of the Council of Syariah Advisors to Financial Institutions in Malaysia here Thursday.

He said the Islamic financial industry had begun to get a place and attention from the non-Islamic community when countries whose majorities were not Muslim like Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, France and Japan showed interest in promoting Islamic finance.

"These developed countries were active in recruting expertise in Islamic finance to become global financial hubs," he said.

Jamil Khir said based on current data issued by Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia the Islam global financial industry needed up to two million skilled workers in the field compared to 92,000 in 2007.

He said this showed each year there was demand for 135,000 workers on average to support the industry.

"In this era of slowdown, we see many losing jobs in various sectors but the opposite scenario is happening in Islamic finance," he said.

He also said the time had come for Muslims to give serious consideration to the use of the gold dinar that is having currency backed by gold.

Jamil Khir said the collpase of a conventional financial system based on fiat money or currency not backed by assets represented the source of credit collapse that had an impact on the global economic slump.

He said study on the gold dinar as replacement to fiat money had to be done urgently.